


On names and their meaning - an essay by Balthazar Long-Step

by Destyno



Series: Morndas Blues [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: (I know the daedroth is a monster in Oblivion but it's also the proper name for a single daedra), Gen, I twisted the lore a bit, Names, Pre-Slash, The Neverending Story References, i guess, it's not an actual essay don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 11:37:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13612563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destyno/pseuds/Destyno
Summary: “Only the right name gives beings and things their reality. A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do.”Or, how a rather odd friendship between a mage and a daedra is born.





	On names and their meaning - an essay by Balthazar Long-Step

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Sui nomi e sul loro significato - un saggio a cura di Balthazar Lungo-Passo](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/356181) by destyno. 



The binding spell falls apart, unraveling like a thousand-year-old, moth-eaten tapestry.

The young man is scared. But the curiosity that burns his bones and twists his insides is stronger than fear, and suddenly he remembers his adoptive sister, almost a lifetime ago, telling him that his own curiosity would be his undoing.

Now, with an unbound dremora right in front of him, he wonders if his sister had read him his future.

The dremora has a neutral expression on his face. At least it’s better than the pure hatred that he saw the first time he called him.

The mage coughs.

“Uhm… hi.”

The Kynval looks at him the way one would look at a madman. Which, he thinks, probably isn’t really that far away from the truth,

“Dismiss me, mortal.” He growls, arms crossed on his chest. “The only reason I have not killed you already is because I am indebted to you.”

“I won’t.”

He almost doesn’t realize he just spoke, and he wonders if this is where he will die: in a little cave; a shelter from the cold, merciless rain that falls from above.

“I want to know your name, first.”

The daedra laughs, a fake, dark laugh that sends shivers down his spine.

“You’re wasting your time,” he says, face twisted wickedly, “for I do not possess one.”

He, being a mage, guessed so. He may be curious, he may be foolish - enough to summon an unbound dremora, at least - but he’s not stupid.  
And now he understands.   
He spoke with the Greybeards, studied the ancient language of the dragons, attended one of the most prestigious colleges of magic in all of Tamriel. Now he knows.

“Only the right name gives beings and things their reality.”

Nothing more than a whisper, lost in the chaotic screams of the rain out there.

He raises his head, staring right into the dremora’s eyes.

“Do you want one?”

The daedra knight winces, and for the first time the shadow of a feeling other than anger crosses his face.

“Pardon?”

“A name. I can give one to you. I - I can do it, I could weave it into your soul, I could make you-”

_Real_ , is the last word that dies in the cold silence that welcomes his suggestion.

Rain and wind see them together, standing one right in front of the other. The dremora hesitates.

“Only…” a pause, as if he’s searching the right words to say, “... only the most powerful among the Kyn have a name.”

“You’re dodging my question.”

The demon's eyes flare up as rage returns to them, and the mage knows that, if looks could kill, he would be nothing but a cooling corpse. But they don’t, so he stands still, waiting for a response.

“You better hold your tongue, mortal.”

But the young man is not scared anymore.

“Why don’t you kill me? You’re not bound. I could put up a fight, sure, but probably not for long. Is it really because I saved your life?”

Instinctively, the daedra touches his shoulder, where the poisoned knife once sank deeply in his flesh, and shivers. There is no scar to see, no sign that it ever happened - as such is the  
nature of Padomay’s children - but the memories of the icy cold of steel and the burning fire of poison are still painfully vivid in his mind.

“What would you want in exchange for a name?”

“What would you say if I told you I don’t want anything?”

“I would say you are insane,” the daedra growls, “and that I will kill you as soon as the opportunity presents itself.”

But the wizard laughs, leaving the daedra speechless.

“Then let’s make a deal.” He says, eyes shining from amusement. “In exchange for a name, I ask for your friendship.”

The dremora looks at him, disoriented, and once again the sound of rain fills the silence between them.

“I was wrong.” He whispers. “You are even crazier than I thought.”

“You are not the first to think this.” The breton laughs, turning his back to him - oh, the _audacity!_ \- and bending down to take a bedroll from his backpack, and then lay it on the ground. “Come on, take a seat.”

He ponders the idea of killing him. He just needs to unsheathe his sword and strike. Daedric  
steel will pierce through clothes and flesh as easily as it would slice through butter. The mage then will gasp, eyes flicking down to look at the blade sticking out of his chest, and then he will collapse on the ground, his blood staining the rain-drenched soil a glorious red.

Fool! He’s not even looking at him, still searching for something in that backpack of his! He could end him with barely any effort.

But he doesn’t.   
There is something, somewhere inside him, that doesn’t want to kill him.

It’s the same something that is asking itself why. Why that small, blue-eyed wizard helped him heal, when poison tormented his body? Why is he offering something as powerful as a name, asking for nothing but friendship?

Friendship.

He knows what it is, obviously - an eternity as a slave between mortals, he was _bound_ to know something about them - but that doesn’t mean he _understands_ it. There is no time for something as ephemeral as friendship or mercy, between the servants of the Lord of Destruction.

Would a name make him feel any different? Only the most powerful among the daedra have a name, but they don’t really seem that different from him. Just as brutal, just as spiteful towards Mundus.  
But their name is one given by their Princes, and that Kynval knew the immutable laws of Aurbis: no daedra can ever make something out of nothing.

Would a name given by a mortal be any different?

His thoughts get interrupted by the young man, offering him a piece of bread.

“Hungry?” He asks. “I know your kind doesn’t need to eat, but I can’t recall if that is, like, a thing you can actually do.”

As if he was hypnotized, the dremora takes the bread.

The mage somehow managed to light a fire, took some bread for himself and sat on the bedroll. Out of the little cave the rain is still pouring.

“Have a seat, come on.” He asks again, with gentle voice, gently patting on the bedroll. “I won’t eat you, you know.”

For some reason, he listens to him, and he sits next to him, bread still in hand.

“So,” the wizard asks, drawing weird lines on the ground with a stick, “do you want this name or not?”

“I should not-”

“I’m not asking what you _should_ do, I’m asking what you _want_ to do.”

Right. What does he want?

He doesn’t know, he realizes. He never had to want anything.

“What would happen, if I had a name?”

“Well-” he throws the stick in the fire “-we could properly introduce ourselves, for one.”

The dremora looks at him, wondering if he’s joking or not, and the young man laughs.

“A name… a name gives you identity. It makes you unique, but in some ways it also limits and define what you are. Minor daedra don’t have names, and you are all interchangeable. Am I wrong?”

The Kynval doesn’t answer.

“You, though…” the wizard stops to bite the bread, thinking, “… three times I summoned you from the depths of the Oblivion: the first time it was in the Hall of the Elements, at the College of Winterhold, the second time it was the Silent Moons Camp, and, lastly, here. Three is a powerful number, is it not? And there was something about you, that… I’m not sure. Your soul, your _animus_ , it was… _different_ , somehow. But maybe it wasn’t your soul, but rather mine, or maybe something else entirely, who knows. Maybe I just made a… made a mistake.”   
He laughs, throwing his head back.

“Divines, I’m such a fool.”

Rain begins to stop. The sky starts to clear.

The daedra chews some bread.

It’s stale.  
He never ate anything before.   
No one has ever offered him anything.

“I accept.”

The mage turns at him, surprised. The dremora’s dark face is determined, his lips pressed together. For the first time, but not the last, the mage thinks his eyes are filled with stars.

“For a name,” he says, “for a name I will try to be your friend.”

The young mage’s face cracks in a big smile.

“It’s - oh, it’s wonderful! I need to- shit, I need to find you a name-” he searches for something in his backpack, and soon he has paper and charcoal in hands “-tell me - no, wait, don’t say it out loud, it would lose potential, just - just write it down.”

And they wrote down names, lot of them, while the sky became finally clear again, and sun returned to shine on Nirn. But no name sounded right, and neither of them could really explain why.

They ended up using almost all of the paper the wizard had with him, searching for a name, until the sky tinges red and orange.  
No clouds on the horizon. It’s not going to rain, not that night.

The young breton shows him another name, and the dremora thinks he likes it, but still… something is _off_ , rather than _wrong_ , as if it lacked something.

He nods, writing it in daedric. He shuffles some letter, adds some others, removes them, until he’s looking at this name.  
He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. But he just _knows_ . It’s the right one.   
They found it.

“It’s-” he swallows “That’s the one.”

“Really?” The mage looks excited. “Lemme see.”

He hands it over, and the human nods.

“Well then. I think we can get started.”

The sun is now well beyond the horizon. The Magna-Ge, the immovable stars, begin to light up the darkness of the night.

While the wizard prepares the ritual the daedra lets himself be nervous, for once.

A name! A name that will be _his_ , no matter what! It’s such a strange thought, it almost doesn’t seem real. He wonders what will happen, what will change.

He wonders if it will hurt.

“Gimme your hand - wait, no, without the gauntlet.”

He obeys, quietly, revealing a big, dark hand, crossed with crimson lines, just as the ones on his face.

The mage takes this hand in his, and the daedra has barely the time to think that his hand is at the same time warmer and colder than he thought before the young man starts talking again.

“I name you et’Ada and daedroth and dremora. I name you Kynval of Clan Dagon, child of the Deadlands, servant of Mehrunes Dagon. And I name you of a new name.”  
He can sense it, the magicka he’s putting into his words. He twists the threads of his magic, weaving inside his tapestry, inside his _animus_ , waiting for the name.

He’s not afraid of being tricked; weaving this spell into the world opened his soul, and this Kynval learned to read human emotion long before this mage was ever born.

The wizard’s voice is vibrant with power. His eyes are shining, and his hair is floating above, in the air crackling with energy.

“Now and forever, your name is-”

It’s dull and overwhelming at the same time.

Nothing visible, or sensibly perceptible, happens: the spell that was weaved around them sublimates,  absorbed by his dark skin.

It’s weird, because nothing changes: the Earth Bones are still the same; Nirn is still alien and still rejects him; Mehrunes Dagon is still his Prince and his master.

It’s weird, because everything changes: he can feel his _animus_ changing, stretching, to welcome this spell inside itself, and he feels like a raft in the middle of a storm, forced to make room to his new name.

And for the first time he can feel every contraction of his weird heart, every breath of unnecessary air he takes inside his lungs.

He wonders if this is how you are supposed to feel.

“You alright?”

The young man’s voice seems to come from far, far away.

He opens eyes he didn’t remember having closed, and looks at the breton like it’s the first time he sees him.

His hair is brown, barely reaching his shoulders. He brushes some of it from his face, revealing eyes as blue as the shining glaciers on Winterhold’s coast when the sun is high. He also seems to have hair on his... face? Chin? Cheeks? Can hair grow like that? He looks at them curiously, wondering how it could feel to have hair growing on your face.

He’s taller than the mage, even when they’re both sitting, and, despite all the clothes he’s wearing to keep himself warm, the daedra can see how small he is. His ears are pointed, like mer’s, how bizarre. Will he let him touch them?

“Uh- yes.” He pauses. “Thank you.”

The young breton smiles, and something inside of him twists. It’s a weird feeling, but not unpleasant. Not at all.

“I…” he coughs, looking away, “… I think we should properly introduce ourselves now.”

The smile on his face gets bigger, and his cheeks and ears start to blush, for some strange reason.

“Ye- yeah, you’re right. Me first.” He clears his throat, giving him his hand to shake. “My name is Balthazar Long-Step, but you can call me Balthazar. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“My name is Kyneev,” he says, shaking it firmly, “and the pleasure is all mine.”


End file.
